Although lacking Bruce Wagner’s rapier bons mots and mordant sarcasm, a pleasant slow roast of Hollywood’s studied inanity,...
Reality-TV packager’s crisis of conscience drives murder plot in a comic’s debut novel.
Trent, newly promoted VP of Nova, which hawks reality-show concepts to the networks and cable, got where he is by never underestimating viewers’ hunger for programs like Pregnant Hookers and Extreme Animal Lovers (a show about bestiality). So when Stewart Dyson, his boss P.T. Beauregard’s Vietnam comrade-in-arms and archrival, tries to recruit Trent to help reform Reality’s venality, he’s all ears. P.T., who has taken telegenic sleaze to the level of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, gloats over Dyson’s sudden, suspicious death, which happened while Dyson phoned Trent to warn him that his own life was in danger. Dyson’s plan to seed the market with socially responsible programs, in which he’d enlisted Trent’s surreptitious complicity, is scuttled. P.T. is now hell-bent on removing the final barrier to Nova’s hijacking of the airwaves, censorious FCC Chairman Ronald Armsburger. Trent is convinced that his volatile boss’s shadowy past conceals mob ties, so he enlists coworkers Max and Rachel to help thwart what he is certain is a planned hit on Armsburger during the latter’s L.A. visit. Max and Rachel, Trent’s bombastic lover, are also in on Trent’s last-ditch ploy to save American minds from further erosion by soulless reality shows: He’s going to kill P.T., take over Nova and launch his pet project, Samaritans, a kind of Pay It Forward with no payday. The fact that American minds aren’t exactly clamoring for more gravitas in their entertainment is lost on Trent, even as his best friend, Adam, finally succeeds in gainfully selling out with a screenplay chockablock with gratuitous violence and ersatz gangsta-speak. Although it stretches credulity that Trent would harbor such illusions without a background in public television, or that he’s desperate enough to murder, the final twist is a thoroughly credible surprise.
Although lacking Bruce Wagner’s rapier bons mots and mordant sarcasm, a pleasant slow roast of Hollywood’s studied inanity, complete with laugh-out-loud reality-show pitches.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-89733-548-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Academy Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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